I started the day leaving Everett early around 4:45 in the morning and getting to the Timberline Lot right around opening time at 9am. I exchanged my prepaid voucher for the actual ticket at Guest Services and went back to the car to gear up. It was a clear breezy day and I used my light windbreaker the whole day to keep the wind chill off and as a sunscreen. You enter the park on the green, Gravy Train trail and ride to the bottom of the Jeff Flood Express (1170’ vertical) which is a fixed-grip, slow, triple chair setup and the only lift operating for the bike park. Hikers and vista seekers can pay extra to ride the upper lift from the lodge area. The area is a little lower tech level than Stevens or Whistler but satisfied my ‘lift-assist’ need for the year. Arctic Circle (blue), Camino De Michoacán (single black), Brobi Wan (single black), Dirtbag Down (blue) and Xerces (blue) were most of my rides down for the duration of the day (11 rides up). The lay of the land (south side flank of Mt Hood) doesn’t have any real steep descents inside the bike park so a double black tech challenge isn’t available. The soils are almost a packed dry sandy ashen soil that has been turned to “fresh powder” in many of the sweeping, banked, turns. It was tough to rely on grip in many of those turns and I went down on my hands twice during the day with front tire slide outs. The views at the top were pretty and two big fires could be seen in the distance (11000 acre White River fire and the 5000 acre Lionshead fire).
